Pages

Thursday, 31 December 2015

Some members of the lgbt community who
had died over the past twelve months. This list is not exhaustive but merely
reflects the range of achievements that their passings represent. They include
the good, the bad and the fabulous. As has been the case for many years the
number of transgender victims of violence is large and I could not possible do
them just today. Ages are given immediately after the names. If no actual date is known the individual appears at the top
of the monthly list.

Wednesday, 23 December 2015

LAST TIME : 75) Oscar Wilde
(1854-1900) met 73) Natalie Clifford Barney (1876-1972)
in 1882, almost 2 decades before her romance with 76) Olive Custance (1874-1944), who went on to marry Oscar’s former
partner 77) Lord Alfred Douglas
(1870-1945), and who were part of the literary circle surrounding Oscar’s
mother, which also included 78) Bram
Stoker (1847-1912).

78)
Bram Stoker will
forever be remembered as the creator of Count Dracula, the world’s most famous
fictional vampire. His mother was a social campaigner in Dublin and was friends
with Sir William and Lady Jane Wilde, 75)
Oscar Wilde’s parents.Bram’s sexuality has been
discussed in several modern biographies of him. Even though he lived a
perfectly standard heterosexual life some parts o f his earlier life lead some
biographers to wonder if some same-sex attraction was present, present in
particular some of his correspondence with the actor-manager Sir Henry Irving
and the American poet Walt Whitman. Stoker was employed by Irving and his
Lyceum Theatre Company and they were, indeed, very close. Whitman was one of
Stoker’s heroes and after they met in 1884 Whitman was impressed by his Irish
admirer. The author Fay Weldon has even gone so far as to label Stoker “a
closet gay”.Victorian perceptions of
same-sex relationships were different to ours. Even 75) Oscar Wilde wouldn’t label himself as homosexual. Oscar
actually had a relationship with the woman 78)
Bram Stoker married. Florence Balcombe has a 2 year romance with Oscar in
the mid-1870s. It ended when Florence announced she had become engaged to
Stoker. They married in 1878.One thing Bram Stoker and
the Wilde’s all shared was a fascination for the supernatural. A new religion
called Spiritualism was popular in Britain and Ireland at that time, and the
Victorians loved ancient traditional myths and superstitions even though the
society was nominally staunchly Christian. Lady Wilde published 2 books on
traditional customs, superstitions and beliefs of Ireland and influenced Oscar
in his creation of his own supernatural tales such as “The Canterville Ghost”.
Bram Stoker, however, looked further afield for his inspiration for “Dracula”.Our modern image of a
vampire owes much to Bram Stoker. Until “Dracula” vampires were hideous
zombie-like creatures (the modern movie zombie is a classic medieval vampire).
Stoker turned the vampire into an aristocratic, elegant and charming gentleman
who seduces his victims.Stoker read and researched
many vampire legends and came up with his fictional vampire’s name from the
Romanian Prince Vlad III “Tepes” Dracula (d.1476). “Dracula” means “son of the
Dragon”, Vlad’s father having been a Knight of the Order of the Dragon. So, if
Bram Stoker made Prince Vlad the “father” of his Count Dracula then he surely
chose 79) Countess Erzsebet (Elizabeth)
Bathori (1560-1614) as his “mother”.79)
Countess Erzsebet Bathori
has gone done in history as the world’s worst serial killer. She had more in
common with the fictional Count Dracula than Prince Vlad. Erzsebet was of
countly rank, Vlad wasn’t (he was a sovereign prince); Erzsebet came from
Transylania, Vlad didn’t (he came form neighbouring Wallachia); Erzsebet drank
human blood, Vlad didn’t (he just tortured and killed people); and Erzsebet’s
bloodlust was in part sensual, Vlad’s wasn’t (he was just sadistic).It is through the stories
of Countess Erzsebet that a lot of the sexual and predominantly lesbian theme
has entered modern vampiric culture. The great Hammer Films exploited this
theme, aided by the Countess’s own lesbian activities, to include lesbian
themes into their many vampire films. In 1971 they turned the Countess’s own
story into the film “Countess Dracula”.Hammer Films is now synonymous
with gothic horror. It was a relatively small film studio and often worked on
several films with the same actors and sets at the same time. Music is always a
vital part of any horror film and Hammer had the distinctive talents of 80) James Bernard (1925-2001) on more
than 30 of their films, including some of their most famous – 4 Dracula films,
4 Frankenstein films among them. He also wrote the music for “The Quatermss
Xperiment”, “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, “She”, “The Legend of the Seven
Golden Vampires” and “The Devil Rides Out”.But it is James’s wartime
work which helps us to complete our trip “Around the World in 80 Gays”.After being conscripted
into the RAF James found himself studying cryptography. He was sent to a top
secret location, the government’s code-breaking centre at Bletchley Park. There
he was appointed to the team which has the task of decoding the Nazi’s Enigma
codes, and the James Bernard’s colleague who is credited with cracking those
codes was …1)
Alan Turing (1912-1954),
the man with whom we began our 80 Gays journey back in January.In celebration of the
completion of our journey I’ve compiled the following meandering montage of
images representing each of the 80 Gays.

I hope you have enjoyed
this journey. It’s been great fun to put together. There are many other routes
and diversions I could have made but I hope the final route has been diverse,
informative and, above all, entertaining. Who knows, I may go “Around the World
in Another 80 Gays” in 2017.I’m taking a couple of
weeks off now, while I concentrate on my final preparations for my talk and
display for Nottingham University in February. I shall be back briefly in New
Year’s Eve with my list of some in the people in the lgbt community who left us
during 2015. I’ll be back on 11th January 2016.It’s Christmas Eve
tomorrow, so let me take this opportunity to say Merry Christmas to you all
and thank you very much for your continued interest.

Sunday, 20 December 2015

In this final Advent
article for this year we’ll end our seasonal celebrations by looking at some of
the many lgbt choruses, choirs and chorales who produce annual Christmas
concerts and sing the songs we’ve looked at in the pervious three Sunday.This is more of a brief
history of the origin of lgbt choirs but we’ll finish with a Christmas
performance by one of the oldest lgbt choruses.I don’t really need to say
that choirs since the very beginning of choral singing way back in the Middle
Ages have had lgbt singers. As far as choirs formed specifically for lgbt
singers is concerned we have to travel to the USA and their culture of forming
choirs in support of social or political causes. This culture began with bands
and small orchestras, similar to the amateur Victorian church choirs in Europe
who would encourage anyone who could sing or play an instrument to join
together and go carol singing. Lgbt choirs are one of many extensions of this
tradition.The earliest reliable
record we have for the first lgbt chorus appears in New York City in 1971.
Composer Roberta Kosse formed a lesbian chorus called Women Like Me to perform
her own compositions. The chorus performed up to 1977.A second women’s chorus
and marching band was formed in 1973 by Hester Brown. This was another New
York-based chorus which went by the name of the Victoria Woodhull All-Women’s
Marching Band, named after a 19th century feminist and US
presidential candidate. Even though they formed the core of this chorus they
weren’t exclusively lesbian.Generally, the credit for
being the first lgbt chorus is given to the Anna Crusis Choir in Philadelphia.
Formed in 1975 it takes its name from the musical term “anacrusis”, the name
given to notes played or sung before the first beat in the first bar of a tune
– a very appropriate name for this lgbt chorus. The founder of Anna Crusis was
Catherine Roma who was challenged by a friend to create a folk-opera about the
history of women in time for the USA’s Bicentennial celebration in 1976.The resulting folk-opera
was called “American Women: A Choral History” and was performed several times.
The choir officially adopts the “feminist” identity but in 1988 they joined the
Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses (GALA).The first male lgbt chorus
appears to be the Gotham Male Chorus. This was formed, again in New York City,
in 1977 and specialised in Renaissance music and Gregorian chant. Although this
genre of music was written specifically by and for men the Gotham Male Chorus
began to accept women singers in 1980 and changed their name to the Stonewall
Chorale. This created the first mixed lgbt chorus.The American tradition of
forming bands and choirs to promote a social cause led to the creation of what
is generally considered to be the best lgbt chorus in existence today – the San
Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. Wikipedia has an excellent article on this choir
and there’s not much I can add to it, so I’ll direct you there for more information.I mentioned GALA in
passing above. This organisation was formed in 1982 and many of its founding
choirs performed at the first Gay Games in San Francisco earlier that year.
Today GALA had many choirs, choruses and chorales as members, and they include
many international groups.And that’s it for today.
To get you into a really festive mood here’s a couple of videos of Christmas
performances by a couple of lgbt choirs, beginning with the San Francisco Gay
Men’s Chorus featuring beautiful rendition of “Silent Night”. That’s followed
by a fun version of the “Twelve Days of Christmas” by the Gay Men’s Chorus was
Washington, and we finish with the Melbourne Gay and Lesbian chorus wishing us
a Merry Christmas.

Friday, 18 December 2015

… or Purple with Pride.We end our look at the 7
Deadly Gay Sins today with Vanity. In some sources vanity is replaced with
Pride, but as Pride has acquired a new meaning within the lgbt community I
didn’t want to use it for today’s Deadly Sin.

Christian tradition makes
Vanity the oldest of all the sins. Lucifer’s vanity was the cause of him being
expelled from Heaven with all the Fallen Angels.I’m sure we all know
someone in the lgbt community who is often referred to as “vain”, but the sin
of Vanity is much more destructive than the desire to look good or praise your
own achievements. Don’t confuse Vanity with arrogance or boasting. These belong
to what the Medieval world regarded as the sing of Vainglory, one of the Deadly
Sins that was dropped from the list a few centuries ago. Definitions have
changed slightly over the centuries. An early definition of “vain” was
“futile”, which survives in sayings such as “all his efforts were in vain”. The
added meaning of “proud” and “narcissistic” came much more recently.Which very neatly brings
us on to Narcissus himself. This Greek man was so full of his own Vanity that
he fell in love with his own reflection.Vanity can really become
deadly to others in the wrong hands. The gay serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer
killed his many victims because he didn’t want them to leave him. This was a
symptom of deadly Vanity, the desire to have your own feelings and needs
dominate those of others who suffer as a consequence.But let’s not dwell on
those horrors and lighten things up. Vanity can be said to be the trait of the
dandies, the impeccably dressed, sometimes over-dressed, men who attract
attention. The most famous dandies in the lgbt community is Oscar Wilde and
Lord Byron. Both dressed to impress.

Some of you may be
recognise this famous portrait of Byron dressed in traditional Albanian
costume. His usual style in both clothing and appearance led to a new word
being invented to describe it – Byronic.There’s one story I like
about Byron from his days in Constantinople. He was invited to the Sultan’s
palace and got dressed up in the most elaborate Turkish costume. He was ushered
into the throne room, whereupon the sultan just uttered a greeting and Byron
was quickly ushered out again. Naturally Byron assumed his fame as a renowned
poet was going to get him a more meaningful audience. Needless to say his own
pride was pricked and he stormed out of the palace in a suitably Byronic huff.Another example of someone
dressing to impress and getting a put-down as response comes with Douglas Byng
(1893-1987). He was one of the UK’s leading drag and cabaret performers in the
first half of the 20th century. I’ve referred to him already in this
7 Deadly Sins series in relation to the sin of Greed.Long before he became a
performer he lived in Nottingham as a boy and young man. One of the traditional
activities for a Sunday afternoon in Nottingham after morning church and Sunday
lunch was for people to dress up in their finery and walk up and down Mansfield
Road, the main road into Nottingham. This earned the name the Sunday Parade.
One year young Douglas decided he’d join the Sunday Parade.Having bathed himself in
milk Douglas donned his best suit, a wig, a purple overcoat, tall cane, and
tons of make-up and strolled up Mansfield Road like some Georgian dandy. He
waved to imaginary friends, and his proud bubble burst when he was recognised
by some neighbours and he sloped back home. “Was my face red!” he wrote in his
autobiography, “Needless to say, it was, courtesy of Max Factor”.One animal most associated
with Pride rather than Vanity is the peacock. Earlier this year I mentioned the
embarrassing situation of an American mistaking the rainbow-coloured peacock logo of NBC as the corporation’s support for same-sex marriage.Another animal associated
in the Medieval world with Vanity was the horse – I’m not sure why. They also
gave Vanity the colour violet, and that means we can complete our 7 Deadly
Rainbow Sins flag.I hope you’ve enjoyed this
6-part series on the 7 Deadly Gay Sins. But wait! What about the 7th,
you’ll be wondering?The last of the sins is
Sloth – the sin of indifference, neglect, boredom and laziness. The Medieval
world gave Sloth a colour as well – light blue. But as light blue isn’t on the
Rainbow Pride flag I couldn’t be bothered to do any research into Sloth!However, I hope to redeem
myself next year when I look at the opposites of the 7 Deadly Sins and look at
each of the 7 Heavenly Queer Virtues.

Tuesday, 15 December 2015

EQUESTRIANISMEquestrian sport makes up
one of the largest groups of lgbt Olympians/Paralympians with 13 being
identified to date, and a handful of non-competing equestrians. There are also
a handful of records between then.The first equestrian
competitor was Norman Elder (1939-2003) in 1960 at the Rome Olympics. As well
as being the first lgbt rider he is also the first Canadian lgbt Olympian. Not
only that but he was also the first lgbt Olympian to have a sibling on the same
team. His older brother Jim was also a successful ride, being Olympic champion
in Mexico City in 1968.Norman Elder has been seen
as something of an eccentric. He was an explorer, an artist, and he collected exotic
animals. Various residents in his Toronto home included a Galapagos tortoise, a
boa constrictor, a couple of pythons, ferrets, lemurs, chinchillas and fruit
bat. His home was also something like a collection of curiosities those 17th
and 18th century aristocrats gathered on their Grand Tours of
Europe. Most of the items in Norman’s collection were gathered during his
lengthy expeditions into remote parts of the world. Some of these expeditions
will feature in a future “X-tremely Queer” article.Norman competed in two
Olympics. As well as Rome he competed, again with his brother, in Mexico City
in 1968. He competed in both the team and individual 3-day event. Although he
finished 3rd in the non-scoring jumping section of the team event
they earned Olympic diplomas by becoming 8th.Later in life Norman
Elder’s reputation was tarnished by his conviction for indecently assaulting
teenage boys before the time when the legal age of consent for homosexual acts
was lowered. Norman died of an apparent suicide in 2003.It would be 16 years
before another lgbt equestrian competitor arrived at the Olympics. In the Los
Angeles games of 1984 American rider Robert Dover (b.1956) competed in the
first of his record 6 Olympic appearances as a competitor at the age of 28 (the
age at which Norman Elder was at his last games in 1968). In all of his Olympic
appearances he was the US equestrian team captain. There are two other records
which Robert Dover may not be too keen to publicise. First is his record as the
oldest lgbt Olympian to compete. At his final games in Athens 2004 he was 48
years old. Winning a bronze at those games makes him the oldest lgbt athlete to
win a medal.Robert is also the first
Olympian to compete as an out gay athlete. In Robert came out before going
to the 1988 Seoul Olympics, his second games, and has competed as an out
Olympian in 5 games, more than anyone else (NOTE: Renée Sintenis was openly
lesbian when she won Olympic bronze in the sculpture contest in Amsterdam 1928;
the first out Olympian in a sport was John Curry, outed the day after
becoming Olympic figure skating champion in Innsbruck 1976, and although he
didn’t compete as openly gay, by time of the closing ceremony he was
an out athlete - the first openly gay Olympian).Even though Robert Dover
didn’t win anything higher than a bronze medal at the Olympics he is regarded
as one of the top ranking equestrian riders in America having won over a
hundred equestrian Grand Prix championships in his career, more than any other
American dressage competitor.The 2000 Sydney Olympics
and Paralympics had the most lgbt equestrian competitors – 9 in total, the
highest in one sport at those games. They were Robert Costello (USA), Robert
Dover (USA), Carl Hester (GB), Paul O’Brien (New Zealand), Kike Sarasola
(Spain), Guenter Seidel (USA), Blyth Tait (New Zealand), Arjen Teeuwissen
(Netherlands), and Paralympian Lee Pearson (GB). The two New Zealanders are the
first male couple to compete at the same games in the same team.One remarkable event occurred
during the medal ceremony of the mixed team dressage event. Of the 12 people
standing on the medal podium only 3 of them were men – and all 3 men were gay
(Robert Dover, Guenter Seidel and Arjen Teeuwissien).Paralympian Lee Pearson
began his record-breaking run of medals at the Sydney games, the first of his
Paralympic appearances. He holds the record for winning the most gold medals of
all Olympian/Paralympians. He won 3 gold medals at all of his first 3
Paralympics. In his 4th, London 2012, he won 1 gold, 1 silver and 1
bronze.Apart from these competing
riders there has also been a handful of lgbt reserves, trainers and team
managers. The first was Mason Phelps, a reserve for the US team at Mexico City
1968. Peter Taylor was assistant team manager for the Canadian equestrian team
at the 1993 Barcelona games. Sydney 2000 competitor Paul O’Brien was an Olympic
selector for the New Zealand team at the Beijing 2008 games, whose
non-competing team manager was Blyth Tait.Lee Pearson and Carl
Hester became the first - and only - openly lgbt athletes in any Olympic sport
to win the same medal, in the same event, for the same country, in the same
year, in the Olympics and Paralympics in the same host city. Both won gold in
the mixed dressage competition at London 2012 for Team GB. (NOTE: Sheryl Swoopes and Stephanie
Wheeler would have been the first to hold this record – USA, gold, basketball,
Athens 2004 – had they both been openly lgbt.)

To end with I’ll briefly
mention something I spotted at the London 2012 games. During the equestrian
events I saw Edward Gall and his partner Hans Peter Minderhoud exchange the
first same-sex lip-to-lip kiss live on television. Unfortunately, I turned off
the recorder before it happened so can’t prove it!! Perhaps if I write to the
BBC they’ll confirm it!Next time the Olympic
Alphabet returns it’ll be the Olympic year 2016.

Sunday, 13 December 2015

After my previous two
Advent articles in which we celebrated the Christmas season in song we’ll now
celebrate by taking the advice we read last weekend and “Deck the Halls”.There are some people who
put up a Christmas tree in October! They assume that seeing them in the shops
means Christmas has actually begun – traditionally you shouldn’t put them up
before Christmas Eve, and leave them up till February 1st, they say
that doing different is bad luck or attracts evil spirits depending on which
country you live in, assuming your country has Christmas trees, of course. But
I’m sure most of us will have put some kind of decoration up by now. I tend to
prefer some natural decorations – real holly, ivy and that kind of thing.Today we’ll look at
another carol, “The Holly and the Ivy” and see how these plants are highly
appropriate for making our Yuletide “gay”.

The use of natural plants
to decorate homes during winter is as old as civilisation itself, even older.
Some historians still hold on to the pre-Victorian fantasy of thinking the use
of greenery is always ritual. There’s no historical reason to assume that in
all cases. People decorated their homes for the same reason we do today. Why do
we paint our walls? Why do we hang pictures and photos on walls? Because our
living spaces would be dull and boring without them, and the ancient peoples
were just as capable of making the same choice.Holly is a good example.
People were decorating their homes with holly long before any ritual meaning
was attached to it. Today a lot is written about the early Christians giving
holly a new meaning by equating the thorns on the leaves with Christ’s crown of
thorns. This was to persuade those very devout worshippers (today we might call
them puritans, or perhaps fundamentalists) that there was no evil in placing
holly in homes or places of worship.Holly is one of many
evergreens to have two sexes. Trees with berries are regarded as female and
those that carry to pollen as male. It is known that these trees can, very
occasionally, swap sex. A partial transformation took place recently in one of
the world’s oldest evergreen trees, the Fortingall Yew. Tradition says that
this Scottish tree is about 5,000 years old – that’s older than Stonehenge! It’s
actually only about 2,000 years old, but that’s still VERY old.

This illustration shows
you what the tree looked like in 1822. Yews are also trees which have lots of
ancient legends attached to them, and they are one of the few trees you can
find in almost every British church graveyard.In October this year
botanists from the Royal Botanical Garden in Edinburgh discovered that one
branch of the ancient tree had grown berries. In its entire recorded history
the Fortigall Yew has been “male” and has never produced berries. Some of the
media got into a frenzy over this “transgender tree”.Trees like this yew can
switch sex all over, not just one branch, and botanists believe the change has
occurred because the tree is so split and divided that the branch in question
produced berries as a fluke.Holly trees can also
change completely from one sex to another. Botanists believe it is a survival
mechanism and that changing sexes saves certain nutrients from being used up.That’s the holly, what about
the ivy?Ivy has different
associations depending on which part of the world you live in. In northern
Europe it was seen as a symbol of eternity and longevity due to it’s presence
throughout the year.In southern Europe ivy was
strongly associated with the Greek god Dionysos and his Roman incarnation
Bacchus, the gods of wine, pleasure, revelry, drunkenness and fertility. Greek
myth says that Dionysos had a mortal son called Kissos who died young. The
goddess Gaia took pity on Dionysos and turned Kissos into the ivy plant (kissos
is the Greek word for ivy). Ever since then Dionysos wore a wreath of ivy
around his head. Modern depictions, however, mistake this ivy wreath for vine
leaves which come from a totally different myth about Dionysos and the death of
his boyfriend Ampelos. This other myth made Dionysos god of homosexuality, or
same-sexual acts (Eros was the god of same-sex love and relationships).The early Roman Christian
church, especially in countries steeped in the Greek and Roman myths, had a
problem with worshippers bringing ivy, Dionysos’ssymbol of pleasure and fertility, into holy
places (too much like uncontrolled, drunken sex, they thought). The Celtic
Christians in the north had no such qualms. Perhaps the Roman church played on
ivy’s northern associations with longevity and eternal life and came to adopt
it as a symbol of Christ’s promise of eternal life.The strongest link between
ivy and Dionysos and Bacchus comes in their specific emblem called the thyrsus.
This is a wand made from the stalk of a fennel plant topped with a pine cone.
Around the stalk is entwined ivy. Academics say this thyrsus is represents the
male penis (academics like bringing sex into things). Dionysos’s followers and
servants carried a thyrsus at all of his hedonistic celebrations and rituals.So, what could any lgbt
seasonal celebration be complete without a bit of holly, ivy and a few pine
cones?Now that we’ve Decked the
Halls let’s hear a rendition of the “The Holly and the Ivy” itself. Here’s the
Denver Women’s Chorus.

Wednesday, 9 December 2015

LAST TIME : 71) Count Robert de
Montesquiou (1855-1921)
was prominent in the Parisian artistic community and supported painter such as 72) Romaine Brooks (1874-1970) who had
a 50-year relationship with 73) Natalie
Clifford Barney (1876-1972), who also had arelationship with 74) Dolly Wilde
(1896-1941), niece of the famous 75)
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900).

75)
Oscar Wilde had
actually met 73) Natalie Clifford Barney
before 74) Dolly Wilde had even been
born.In 1882 Oscar went on a
lecture tour of America. One stop on the tour was the Long Beach Hotel in New
York, Staying at the hotel at the time was Mrs. Alice Pike Barney and her
family, which included the 5-year-old Natalie. At that young age Natalie
remembered the encounter and recalled it in her memoirs. She remembered how she
was being chased by a group of boys and ran past a gentleman who scooped her up
and away from her pursuers. That gentleman was Oscar Wilde who then sat her on
his knee and told her a “wonderful tale”, as she described it.Oscar’s influence on her
mother was no less marked. Mrs. Barney wanted to be an artist, despite her
husband’s objections. Oscar persuaded her to follow her dream, and she studied
art under several established painters, including James McNeill Whistler, the
friend of 71) Count Robert de
Montesquiou and influencer of 72)
Romaine Brooks. Some of Mrs. Barney’s paintings are in the Smithsonian
American Art Museum.Now we come to a
convoluted set of relationships. In 1900 73)
Natalie Clifford Barney had a short romance with 76) Olive Custance (1874-1944), a bisexual heiress and aspiring
poet. Olive had been moving in London’s literary circles since the age of 16
and had met 75) Oscar Wilde. It
wasn’t long after the romance began that Olive introduced Natalie to 77) Lord Alfred Douglas (1870-1945).
The well-known relationship between Lord Alfred and Oscar Wilde and the trial
that ensued is one of the key moments in the UK’s lgbt heritage. But that was a
few years previously in 1895.Olive Custance and Lord
Alfred began a courtship around the time of Oscar’s death. However, Olive found
herself becoming engaged to another acquaintance, an old school friend of Lord
Alfred. When this other suitor returned from a trip to America Olive and Lord
Alfred ran away and married in 1902, much to her father’s objections. Olive
remained a close friend of Natalie Barney, making her godmother to their only
child. The marriage wasn’t a particularly successful one with various issues
leading to separations and reconciliations (of sorts) but they remained
married. They died just over a year apart from each other.The Wildean Web, as I call
it, the many connections that can be centred around Oscar Wilde, would fill a
whole volume. His reputation and personality drew people to him like moths to a
flame. Those people I’ve already mentioned come from the period after Wilde
became famous, but there are also other literary lgbt connections that date
from his younger years.One connection cones
through the Salon, not Natalie Clifford Barney’s Paris Salon, as Oscar died
before it was established, but a London Salon established by his own mother
Jane, Lady Wilde. She was also a very successful writer who had a large number
of influential connections.I cannot finish without
mentioning a very unusual connection. Wilde’s most famous play in arguably “The
Importance of Being Earnest”. It was made into an equally famous film in 1952
starring Michael Redgrave and Edith Evans (the words “a handbag?” have never
been the same since). The film was directed by the openly gay Anthony Asquith,
or the Hon. Anthony Asquith, to give him his title. That’s because is father
was the former British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, Earl of Oxford and Asquith.
Oscar Wilde had known Herbert Asquith since the 1870s through his mother’s
connections. Before becoming Prime Minister Herbert was Home Secretary, and
quess who signed the arrest warrant for Oscar Wilde in 1895? Yes, the Home
Secretary Herbert Asquith.It is Lady Wilde who introduces us to the next link in our journey Around the World in 80 Gays. One of her acquaintances was another famous writer who actually married the girl Oscar Wilde had hoped to marry. That other writer was 78) Bram Stoker (1847-1912).

In the final part of this
series we’ll see how 78) Bram Stoker
and two other lgbt people take us back to 1)
AlanTuring.

Sunday, 6 December 2015

Happy Santa’s Day. Yes,
it’s the feast day of St. Nicholas today and several countries are celebrating.One of the things I
enjoyed quite a lot when I was young was going carol singing with my siblings.
We visited neighbours houses in the dark evenings and serenaded them with our
favourite carols. As a teenager I joined my local Methodist youth club in
carolling around the rural village where I was brought up.Most people confuse carols
with hymns. Hymns are specifically religious, but carols don’t need to have any
religious content at all and yet still be seasonal. Today’s subject is one such
carol and one of the most popular – “Deck the Halls”. It also caused a bit of a
stir in an American school and a major retail chain for all the wrong reasons.I imagine that this has
happened in other places at other times, but in December 2011 a music teacher
at the Cherry Knoll Elementary School in Traverse City, Michigan, decided her
young pupils would not sing the traditional line in the carol that goes “Don we
know our gay apparel”. The reason she gave was that the children kept giggling
every time they sang the word “gay”. What the teacher substituted instead was
“bright”. Changing the lyric just because children were giggling at it is a
pretty lame excuse, if you ask me.When some of the
children’s parents found out they were surprised and wanted it changed back.
When the Principal of the school, Chris Parker, found out he too requested that
the word “gay” be reinstated into the pupil’s songsheets. He commented that the
whole incident could have been handled as an educational exercise, after all
that’s what teachers are paid for.Some of the pupils were
very young. They were first and second graders and probably thought of “gay” as
something of a taboo word and may not have been aware of any other definition
of the word other than the sexual one. They had probably never heard it being
used in any other way. Its older sense meaning “bright” is rarely used today,
mainly because of the extensive modern use in the context of homosexuality. I
know when I was at school at that age there were many innocuous words that made
us giggle and think we were saying something that was somehow rude. I’m so old
that even saying the word “sex” was rude when I was 6 years old!On a side note, if the
teacher thought the word “gay” was being misinterpreted by the pupils, why
didn’t she change other words they probable wouldn’t have heard before as well?
Would the children know what “don” and “apparel” meant?However, another group of
people – grown-ups, this time – fell into the same embarrassing situation two
years later. I don’t know if it was through over-zealous political correction
or just ignorance of the public’s intelligence.In 2013 the greetings card
giant Hallmark decided to produce a Christmas tree ornament in the shape of a
tiny knitted sweater. On it was stitched the words “Don we now our FUN apparel”
As the San Francisco Chronicle put it, “In attempting to avoid a controversy,
Hallmark had apparently offended almost everyone.”Again, the public rose
almost as one in response and complained about, and even ridiculed, the
decision to change “gay” to “fun”. Didn’t Hallmark know that the carol is more
well-known as they are and likely to be around long after they’ve gone?
Millions of us have grown up with this carol, and we are intellectually capable
of recognising the actual meaning of the lyrics.A rather pathetic excuse
given by Hallmark was that the word “gay” has multiple meanings and they
changed it because they thought it would “leave our intent open to
misinterpretation”. That “intent” was to introduce a feeling of “fun” into
celebrations (as if using the word “gay” was going to stop the fun!). Then they
turned the apology around by blaming the popular use of wearing colourful
festive sweaters. That sounds pretty lame as well, as if they wouldn’t have
changed the word if they had used the line on a different type of ornament or
card.Perhaps it was all just a
publicity stunt. Commercial companies like creating controversy to boost their
sales. The “fun” ornament was removed from Hallmark’s stores but it remained on
sale on their website.Many lgbt choirs include
“Deck the Halls” in their Christmas repertoire, and I doubt any of them will
change the lyrics, and I also doubt if any of them have not resisted the urge
to parody the lyrics in the name of harmless seasonal fun. That’s how it should
be. Gay is a harmless word and isn’t the only word in the English language that
has more than one interpretation – comedians build their careers on exploiting
the different meanings of words.Let’s end with the carol
itself. Here’s a rather formal rendition of the carol sung by the Boston Gay
Men’s Chorus.

Thursday, 3 December 2015

“Champions of Justice” is
the title of my newest guided tour of lgbt Nottingham. I did the full tour for
a paying client for the first time a week ago and it went very well. I usually try
out parts of new tours on my established tours to see what works. I tried out
the last part of the new tour in summer when I did my Robin Hood tour for a
group of teenagers.So, who are the Champions
of Justice, and how do they fit in with Nottingham’s lgbt heritage? Here are
the basics.ROBIN
HOOD – CHAMPION OF THE POOR AND OPPRESSED.There’s no way you can
talk about Champions of Justice in Nottingham and not mention Robin Hood. The
first lgbt connection is my theory that the ballad which forms the basis of the
legend and stories familiar to us today was written by Sir John Clanvowe who
was married to Sir William Neville, Constable of Nottingham Castle. There’s no
room to go into the details here, but if you put “Sir John Clanvowe” into the
search box you can find out more.Robin Hood was used by the
lgbt community in Nottingham as the subject of a play by a gay street theatre
group in the 1970s. Of course they put their own distinctive slant on the legend.
Robin was transformed into Robina, Maid Marian was a man in drag, and someone
else dressed up as the Major Oak. They put on their play outside the city
Council House where a reception was being held for a Soviet trade delegation.
When the delegates left the reception and saw the performance outside they were
impressed that the council had arranged a special performance for them by the
Robin Hood Society. A passing dog was also fooled, at least by the actor
dressed as the Major Oak because it peed up her leg! The council wasn’t
impressed and got the security guards to chase the actors away. Just how they
explained that to the Soviets isn’t known!LORD
BYRON – CHAMPION OF THE UNEMPLOYED AND INDEPENDENCE FIGHTERS203 years ago this week
the British government sent hundreds of troops into Nottingham to quash the
rioters known as the Luddites. These were hand-weavers who had been put out of
work by newly invented weaving machines. They lost their jobs, their only income,
and became destitute. Hundreds of them went around smashing the new machines
and attacking their ex-employers’ homes. Parliament then passed an act which
meant that anyone found guilty of rioting would be hanged. It didn’t stop the
rioting.A few weeks later the
24-year-old Lord Byron stood up in the House of Lords to make his maiden
speech. He had spend that Christmas in the Nottingham area and undoubtedly knew
about the riots. He said that it was wrong to hang the Luddites because they
had no other choice but to smash the machines and reclaim their livelihoods. His
words made him a hero in Nottingham.By 1823 Byron was known
throughout Europe because of his poetry (and his pansexual antics!). He was
persuaded to join the Greek fight for independence from the Ottoman Empire. He
was treated like a war-hero when he arrived in Greece, even though he hadn’t
seen any military action. They were so in awe of him that he they virtually
offered him the throne.Unfortunately Byron died
of a fever before he saw any action. But he was – and still is – treated as a
national hero in Greece. His body arrived back in Nottingham for burial.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of people came to see and pass by his coffin as it
rested in a city centre inn overnight. Many were there to remember him as a
great poet, but many more were there to remember him as a champion of the
unemployed Luddites.RAY
GOSLING AND IKE COWEN – CHAMPIONS OF GAY RIGHTSThese two men were among
the first members of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) founded in
Manchester in 1969. Nottingham was one of the first branches formed and Ray and
Ike were members. Ray was also one of the city’s youngest – and first openly
gay - councillors in the 1960’s and was Vice-President of the CHE. He later became
a very popular radio and tv broadcaster. Ike was a former RAF officer and a
university law lecturer who wrote the CHE’s constitution.In 1977 they persuaded the
CHE to hold their annual conference in Nottingham. Several city hotels hosted discussions,
workshops and events, but one event created the biggest stir in the CHE’s
existence thus far. One discussion was on the subject of the psychological
origins of paedophilia led by a Dutch doctor and MP who had been imprisoned in
Holland for having sex with underage boys. The public and the media in 1977
were outraged. Several protest meetings were held outside the hotel, and the
hotel (quite understandably regarding the violent anti-gay climate at the time)
cancelled the events for fear of attacks on the hotel and its staff. The event
was moved to another venue (from which the media was banned). In spite of this
controversy the conference was deemed a huge success.D.
H. LAWRENCE – CHAMPION OF FREEDOM FROM CENSORSHIP (POSTHUMOUSLY)Freedom from state censorship
in the UK owes a lot to the trial in 1960 in which Penguin Books was prosecuted
for obscenity for publishing local novelist Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s
Lover”.SIR
WILLIAM NEVILLE AND SIR JOHN CLANVOWE – CHAMPIONS OF THE FREEDOM TO WORSHIPThis couple have appeared
on this blog many times (again, enter their names in the search box). Both men
were members of the Lollard Knights, a group of knights who supported the right
to worship without interference or persecution from the Vatican (long before
Henry VIII created the Church of England).The Archbishop of
Canterbury was very anti-Lollard and excommunicated all Lollard preachers. One carried
on preaching and came to Nottingham in 1387, whereupon he was arrested. Sir
William Neville, as Constable of Nottingham Castle at the time, suggested the
preacher be held in the castle cells as they were more secure. The authorities
agreed.What no-one noticed after
a few months was that the preacher had disappeared from the castle and was
found in hiding under the protection of another Lollard Knight over a hundred
miles away. It’s obvious that Sir William Neville’s Lollard sympathies had
something to do with the escape. Fortunately, being one of the king’s closest
courtiers, he wasn’t punished. Eventually, the Archbishop declared all Lollards
heretics and had them burnt at the stake. Sir William and Sir John escaped this
punishment also, both having died some years previously.And
those are just a few of Nottingham’s lgbt Champions of Justice.

Sunday, 29 November 2015

Happy Advent everyone.
There’s only 4 Sundays left before Christmas and I’m celebrating again. This
year instead of concentrating on people I’m getting into the party mood and
looking at some of the things that makes Christmas “happy and gay”.We’ll start with the very
song which inspired the title of this Advent series, a line from the popular
song “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”.The song was written by
Hugh Martin for the 1944 film “Meet Me In St. Louis”. It was sung by the film’s
star, that great gay icon Judy Garland. It quickly became a regular Christmas
standard. The lines from the song go like this :“Have
yourself a merry little Christmas.Make
the yuletide gay.From
now on our troubles will be miles away”.The song’s original lyrics
were not so optimistic. The opening lines were :“Have
yourself a merry little Christmas,It may
be your last.Next
year we may all be living in the past.”Very jolly – I don’t
think!Thankfully, Judy Garland
and her soon-to-be husband, the film’s bisexual film director Vicente Minelli,
though brighter lyrics were better.Even in 1944 when the film
was made the word “gay” had been used to describe homosexual men but it was
more commonly used in its original sense of “happy and bright”. No-one thought
of any deliberate double-meaning in introducing the word into this particular
song at the time. Thankfully there are still many singers who sing the song
with its gay yuletide intact.The double meaning of the
word gay was used deliberately in a 2004 romantic comedy whose title is the
very line “Make the Yuletide Gay”. The film tells the story of a gay American
college boy who goes to spend Christmas with his parents. Although he is openly
gay in college he is not to his parents.

Christmas often presents
difficult situations for lgbt people still, especially those who are in the
same situation as the protagonist if the film.The film received a
favourable response on its original release. It won several awards at lgbt film
festivals and there were plans to make a sequel, “Make the Yuletide Gay 2”.
However, these plans were recently shelved, though the film’s writer hopes that
it can be turned into a novel instead.At the end of these four Advent
articles I want to finish on a song. So what else could I end today with than
the very song that gives this Advent series its name – Judy Garland singing
“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”.

About Me

I was born during a thunderstorm in the summer of 1960 and was brought up in a village in north Nottinghamshire. I attended the sort of school which practiced “history for girls, geography for boys”, but developed a love of history none-the-less.